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Chapter 1
Chapter 1 – Turmoil at Home Victoria sat down sheepishly on the leather couch in her family’s living room. She looked around quickly, almost embarrassedly, at the room, checking for any intruders she had not noticed in her entrance. Sighing heavily, she picked up the remote and turned on the television to her favourite channel. “Maybe today will be peaceful,” she said to herself, very quietly. She looked around again, but no one had entered the room or interrupted her reflections, so she sat back and kept watching the T.V. and listening quietly along to it. Eventually, the couch was so comfortable and the heated interior of the room was so warm that she lost track of time and fell asleep. She awoke with a very rude start. “Victoria! Victoria Anne Ingle! Get your ass up and wash the dishes, right now!” her mother shouted from the hall of the second story that overlooked the living room. Victoria stumbled forward, off the couch, bleary-eyed and unaware of her surroundings. “Uh, okay, yes ma’am, I will, sorry, I just lost track of time!” She replied to the earlier shout. “Don’t give me your excuses, just do as told, sound good? Good. Get to it,” her mother replied, without allowing her daughter to say any more. Victoria got up dejectedly but then looked up at her mother, who was leaning with her hands palm-down on the railing and looking at her, and forced a smile. She then turned and frowned, then rolled her eyes, as if those gestures would somehow grant her an upper hand in the subconscious battle between herself and her mother. The kitchen was normally kept in an unhealthy, unhomely state of tidiness, and the only soiling to be found at any given time would be in the sink. All of the household’s many dirty dishes ended up in the sink, after being rigorously scraped of their contents either into the occupant’s mouths or into the trash can at the end of the counter by the door. They would then be rinsed off, typically by Victoria, then washed by hand and set in the dishwasher to really make them sparkle – again, all by Victoria alone. In addition, unless Victoria had made dinner, the rest of her family paid no mind to how many dishes they used or how filthy they made them, expecting her to meekly clean them without any opposition; this meant that there were, three days out of the seven of every week, many, many dishes to clean. Tonight was such a night, and Victoria paid it no mind as she grabbed the handheld dish sprayer from the side of the faucet. Her mother had walked up behind her as she had been retrieving a dishcloth and drying towel from the cupboard, and was now staring down her daughter as she started to wash the dishes. “Cheating, hmm? What a lazy girl. At least you’re doing them. Get to it. I want them done in ten minutes,” came her snide response to Victoria’s use of the sprayer. Victoria winced, but said nothing other than “Okay, I will, thank you,” to her mother, who then left, seemingly pleased with herself, to watch T.V. herself. Her mother, Hannah, then turned on a religious talk show – The 700 Club, from the sounds of it – and contented herself by sitting on the couch and staring semi-consciously at the screen. Victoria shook her head, but continued her dishes and made her head-shaking look as if she’d just had some hair caught over her eye. She did not. She was finishing up the dishes – drying the last few pans out of the dishwasher and putting them up – when Hannah walked in to get a cup of iced sweet tea. She rudely reached in front of Victoria, who stepped back to respectfully allow her mother to walk in front of her and received a rude glance in exchange, and grabbed a cup that she had just put in the drainer. Victoria opened her mouth to protest, but seeing her mother’s second evil glance, decided better of it and tried to make like she was being friendly: “That’s your favourite cup, isn’t it?” she asked with a falsely cheerful tone. “Favourite cup. What an absurd proclamation. If I had such a thing, this one would not be it.” Her mother responded without looking at her. Victoria rolled her eyes and put the last pan up. Victoria had just closed the dishwasher, rinsed out the sink, and finished cleaning the counters when she heard one of her mother’s ruder statements regarding gay people after the subject was approached on her television show. “Faggots - to Hell with them and good riddance.” She sneered, then sat down. Victoria felt like throwing up. She had never told her mother she was bisexual or that she preferred girls, and felt like doing so less now more than ever. She simply reached her head in, quickly said good night, and ran up to her room on the second story. There, she practically fell onto the bed and wept for what seemed like an eternity. She had learned, after being beaten time and time again for crying, that to cry was to induce pain, so she cried as quietly as she could manage. When she finally looked up, her pillow was soaked and she was red in the face, as the slight reflection in the photograph of her relatives in Maine on her bed showed. She turned towards the outer wall facing east and cried some more, while holding her pillow tightly, cuddling it for comfort. She felt very alone in the world. Victoria had lived in this environment for all her life, though her life in that house was relatively new. They had bought it to finally settle down – and did, after a fashion. Her mom and dad got good jobs; her dad worked nearby in Mobile, Alabama and her mother worked primarily from a home office, as she was a book and magazine editor for local publishers. They did well for themselves, but both of her parents never wanted children. To them, she was an unwelcome guest in their dream house, and they – especially her mom – had no problem in reminding her of this. Those are the thoughts that pervaded her space as she lay motionless on the bed, crying softly and watching the night sky. Little is more beautiful than the clear night sky seen from an unobstructed second story window. Little – perhaps even nothing – save for Victoria herself. Though her mother envied her youth and was visibly jealous of her looks, Victoria was beautiful beyond measure. She had soft, clear brown eyes that showed a strength and valour almost unknown in the world today. To consider them was to witness wisdom. Her smooth, brown hair was not long, and she rarely wore it up except when she wore a cute yellow or blue bow. There was never a feature about her that one would not fall in love with. Her skin was clear and gorgeous - enviable, even, to the purest of models - and her smile was joy. She stood only 5’2”, and weighed but 105 pounds, but she was strong, courageous, and brave regardless of her small stature. It is easy to see why a woman such as her mother would have envied her. “Whatever,” she thought to herself, “it won’t ever get better.” She continued thinking this, and cried harder, though she eventually fell into a shallow, troubled sleep, full of nightmares and awakenings in the night. Some nights were better than others, to be sure. But most nights in Victoria’s subconscious life were filled with venom and hatred. She tended to have the same recurring nightmare; a nightmare about a dragon, a red and black wyvern, who sought to burn the world. He would fly towards her, batting his astronomically large wings, and would disappear in a crack of flame and dust. She would burst awake, and stare at her My Little Pony night light in the corner, and shake her head. Then, usually, she would walk to the window, crack it enough for air to pass through, and climb back into bed – all while walking on pins and needles and maintaining an uneasy silence about her every movement. The next morning, Victoria awoke in the same manner she always had. She needed no alarm clock; she had trained herself, after years of being hit hard if she overslept, to wake up at 5:30 A.M., far before anyone else in the house was even stirring in their beds. Light was not yet streaming over the horizon, but outside her window the stars were blinking away into oblivion. The house was silent and peaceful, like all houses are at this hour. Victoria crept along the floor towards her solemn door in the half-light of her room. She calmly and smoothly opened the well-oiled drawers of a dresser by her bed and reached in to pick out her outfit. As a very modest but also somewhat carefree girl, her typical favourite outfit was composed of a pair of baggy sport shorts, a shirt with words or pictures on it (preferably with a reference to a beloved video game series like Pokémon or The Legend of Zelda), and one or two bows tying her hair up. Without hesitation, she grabbed these up and stealthily slid out of her room on the west side of the house. The bathroom was the next room over, located between her and her older brother’s room, and across from the living room overlook. She walked to the bathroom door and closed the door noiselessly behind her. Flipping the light switch on and sighing, she removed her nightshirt – an oversized Saint Louis Cardinals shirt that came down nearly to her knees – and put on the Legend of Zelda t-shirt she had taken from her dresser. For some reason, she always felt very safe and secure when she wore this shirt, and liked it better than most of her clothes. She heard a door close downstairs. Her blood froze. Time seemed to stand still, and she cracked the door and looked out. She sighed with relief when she saw through the door and the living room overlook railing that it was only her father, getting a cup of Pepsi from the refrigerator. She silently closed the door and continued dressing herself, pulling on her shorts and tying the small drawstring in the front. Finally, she stared at herself in the mirror and grimaced, but managed to place her yellow bow in her hair, tying it up in a single ponytail on one side. Victoria put her hands on her hips and posed in front of the mirror. “Three days without hurting…” She thought to herself as she rubbed the side of her belly where her most recent self-harm scars were. Victoria smiled, though, and then made a funny pose; she smiled at her own silliness, then cracked the door again to see if her father was still in the kitchen. He was, so she took a few more minutes to relieve herself and rub her various aching, popping joints. Though when she was being very slow and careful they were quiet, her body was normally quite loud; her joints popped, her neck cracked, her head always seemed a little heavier to lift and made a little bit more noise when she woke up every morning. After several minutes, she got up and walked out of the bathroom, dressed and ready to face the day. She sighed and walked down the stairs, taking baby steps on the soft carpet and avoiding spots she knew possessed a squeak, all so that she would avoid making noise. Noise meant awakenings; awakening her mother before 8:00 A.M. meant beatings, and cruel ones. On a good day, it meant just being screamed at, but Victoria had no idea if this would be a good day or a bad day. She finally reached the bottom of the stairs and tiptoed across the maple-coloured hardwood to the other side of their kitchen. The coffeemaker was programmed to begin brewing at 6:00 every morning, and was diligently doing so now. Cooking was out of the question at this stage, so Victoria sorted through their fruit basket until she found several tiny easy-to-peel oranges, then grabbed a donut from a sealed breadbox near the microwave. She set these all on a small plate and poured her coffee – a dark black Starbucks flavour – in a Steven Universe coffee mug with a little hazelnut creamer and pulled a small jar of Nutella out of the cabinet. Content, she pulled up a stool to the counter attached to a square wooden column at the false wall separating the living room and kitchen. Her meal was good, and her game was going well. Everything seemed alright, for a time. She checked the time after a while: 6:47 AM. Almost time for the bus. She finished her coffee in one gulp, rinsed off her plate and mug by hand with the faucet, and picked up her backpack from beside the couch in the living room, then headed outside to wait. It was cold, that was certain. The school year always seems like the coldest part of the year, and as the sun was just beginning to rise, the sky was coloured in a dazzling palette of styles and streams she had never seen before. In places, it was dark and azure, burning with a blue flame; in other places, the pink and red of a stormy night and day to come danced about each other. The barren trees near her front porch made it seem colder, chilling her very bones. She shivered and checked her phone: 6:53. She didn’t have time to change. “It’ll warm up sooner or later,” she thought to herself. This was the South, after all. Soon enough, her bus came and honked the horn. By this time, she’d already walked the half-mile of her driveway to the roadside, and she waved to the bus driver. She flashed a beautiful smile, happy to be leaving her home, if only for school. In an effort to avoid any comments regarding her shorts, she sat in one of the front seats and entertained one of the younger children there with a delightful story from her imagination. The children on her bus could be very cruel, but she had learned to accept it. She simply avoided them now. Even though she was sixteen, things still got to her easily, and nothing made her more upset than to be insulted at school – which was typically her only reprieve from the insults she received at home. So now, she typically sat in the front of the bus and wore her earbuds for the entire ride. Sometimes, she didn’t even listen to music – she’d watch Steven Universe or Rick and Morty episodes on YouTube. When she did listen to music, she preferred various Asian pop genres and occasionally listened to City and Colour’s Little Hell album. The other kids on the bus simply didn’t understand her taste in media. The bus stopped at last at the school, and she got up last out of all the kids and walked out head-down, paying little attention to anyone. She was stopped shortly thereafter by a very intimidating beast of a boy in a Tap Out t-shirt and gym shorts; it was the same boy she had been buying prescriptions of sleeping pills from for the past few months, when sleep had become more difficult than ever since her pain had been getting worse. He grabbed her by the shoulder and turned as he spun her towards him. She flinched hard, but he just sneered. “Hey, short shit. Got my money yet?” Category:Chapters